Orlando + The Human Voice

Announcing O Cinema’s new and exciting monthly series, SEASONED ACTORS that celebrates the work of an actor that has contributed to indie and pop cinematic culture in our lifetimes.

ORLANDO is the story of a journey through time, of someone who lives for four a hundred years, first as a man, then as a woman. As a young nobleman, Orlando is granted favors and property by Queen Elizabeth I. After her death, he falls passionately in love with a visiting Russian princess on the glittering ice of the frozen river Thames. The princess leaves Orlando, however, and, after a disastrous brush with poetry, he takes up his "manly" destiny as an Ambassador in the deserts of Central Asia. There, in the midst of war, unwilling to kill or be killed, he changes sex. As a woman, Orlando returns to the formal salons of 18th century London, where she faces a choice: marry and have heirs or lose everything. In this age of wildness and repression, she meets the man of her dreams, but chooses to forsake both love and her inheritance. Finally, Orlando emerges into a twentieth century filled with speed and noise as an ordinary individual, who, in losing everything, has found herself.

PRECEDED BY:

THE HUMAN VOICE | Directed by: Pedro Almodóvar | 2020 | 30m | Unrated | In English[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3lGM39dKuY[/embedyt]Tilda Swinton swallows up the screen as a woman traumatized by the end of a relationship in Pedro Almodóvar’s first English-language film. In 30 mesmerizing minutes, Tilda Swinton’s nameless character runs through a frightening gamut of emotions, from despair to fury to exhilaration, all while isolated in a luxurious apartment that’s also a stage set; her only companions are her ex-partner’s dog, Dash, and the betrayer’s unheard presence on the other end of her phone. Almodóvar used many of his frequent collaborators, including cinematographer José Luis Alcaine and composer Alberto Iglesias, for this impeccably designed yet combustible adaptation of Jean Cocteau’s 1930 play The Human Voice.